User blog:CuteLunaMoon/Chapter 11: Where The Lonely Ones Roam, part 2
'Warning: This chapter contains violence and sexual contents. Read at your own risk ' After reading some pages in Sophia's diary, I feel a little sleepy and decide to take a nap. I check my warning system again to make sure the slightest vibration on the barricaded door would ring the bell hang above my head. I'm in a nightmarish realm, I can't lower my guard. Laying my back on the moth-eaten mattress, I close my eyes and sleep to regain some strength. ...I see myself in the garden between the Astral Clocktower and the Research Hall again. The air is filled with a soothing aroma and on the dark sky, I see stars, and the milky way and the vast stretch of the cosmos. Their sheer number illuminate the sky and from afar, I see the moon. It's so big and bright and the light it casts fill the thicket with a bewitching silver ray. The flowers in the garden are drawn to the magical river of light the moon pours onto the ground. Here and there, fireflies are dancing on the flower . A sudden spark ignites a sea of diamond. In front of the vast emptiness of the last frontier, I feel so small and insignificant. "For a moment, in the magical rhythm of the soothing ray of moonlight and the constellations, I somehow dream that I hear the breathing of the cosmos, a rhythmic whisper echoing the vast emptiness of space and time, throughout all plane of existence, breathing life into beings, seen or unseen. Advanced as we may be, our existence, too, are all too insignificant among the stars, or so the ones before us, those whose footprint has long vanished, say " ... A motherly warm voice whisper somewhere, break the silence... Around me, there're many people. They look pretty normal and all don a white patient suits. They seem to be hypnotised by the bewitching canvas but when I walk to them, they are more likely consumed in their own worlds. An old man is talking to a flower, which he calls his wife. Another young lad is sitting on the ground and singing a country song, perhaps in Slovaks or Turkish, I don't know. I carelessly trip and fall and am horrified by the shadow I cast. It doesn't look like me anymore, but something else. There are leaves and perhaps flowers petal on my head. I turn to check if there is a tall flower behind me but no, it isn't the trick of the light. I look into other's shadow and they, too, have even stranger shadows. Some shadow is very big, while others have very large heads. I notice a girl who is finding something within a small puddle and walk to her. In the reflection, her head is enlarged to an uncanny size her face has been mutilated beyond imagination. She does not seem to see me coming but she perhaps hears my footsteps, so she says "Has someone, anyone, seen my eyes? I'm afraid I've dropped them in a puddle. Everything is pale, now..." I feel sorry for the strange girl and sit down to help her but there is nothing in the small puddle. I tell her to find her eyes elsewhere but the girl does not seem to notice a bit and resumes her searching... I hear the sound of the great chimes of the clocktower and look up. To my surprise, the clock is running counter-clockwise. When I look down, the people who were previously here have vanished, as if they were just the shadows of a distant past. The heavy door under the clocktower sprang open and walks out a beautiful lady with fair blonde hair and a sad face . She does not seem to see me as I wave her. She bows down and gently sever a flower. She whispers something about an experiment of some sort needs to be stopped. She walks past me as if I am invisible and disappears as suddenly as she emerges. ... I open my eye and see myself in the ruined house again, quite refreshing after a deep slumber. I look in the mirror and quite satisfied to see a young beautiful reflection of mine looking back. I have not changed. I'm still me. But, surprisingly, I find many flower petals around me. Was that a dream? I suddenly feel a faint ache in my left foot and look down to see a small bruise, as if I tripped on something. I'm sure that was all a dream. But I'm in a nightmare, I'm not in the waking world anymore, to begin with. So if I die in a dream, might I die as well? I don't have any further explanation. But perhaps I could just leave it at that, for anything can happen in a nightmare. Perhaps, just like a philosopher once said, I exist because I think. Or because I believe so. But it matters not. I still exist. That's what important. When I comb my hair, with a cold shiver down my spine, I spot a leaf sprouting from my head. Though it freaks me out, I have no intention of removing it. I sigh and dress myself up. After a meagre meal of smoked crow bits, I decide to use the fine-crafted Reiterpallasch as my main weapon. After waking up from the uncanny fall the previous day, I noticed that my agility has been increased at least twofold. The Ludwig's Holy Blade was good, but its weight would limit my manoeuvre. I will train myself more with the new weapon. From the leather manuscript of Sophia, I read that certain inhuman beast, after they died, left their power in their cold blood. Such crystallized blood called a blood gem . A blood gem can fortify weapons and add various properties. On the page of a queer golden blood gem, She wrote:" Most radial blood gems have effects that bear upon physical attacks, and this golden radial blood gem, kept for generations with the Church, strengthens attacks against those afflicted intensely by beasthood. When clerics began transforming into unspeakable beasts, the Church needed something to retaliate with. " She recorded many blood gems, but there are many missing pages as well. I cannot identify the blood gems on my weapon. They seem to be a little stranger than the ones Sophia had seen. When I walk outside, the strange moon still lingers in the sky, unchanging on the misty horizon. I walk to the building nearby for hygiene and on the way back to my dwelling, I spot two blood-drunk hunters sitting idly on top of a worn chariot. They are talking something and one is giggling. I creep closer and hide behind a strange rock to hear their conversation. One of the old hunter, who dons a ragged Tomb Prospector set is bragging about his marvellous night in an Old Yharnam brothel. But the other one, who is remarkably larger, perhaps he's half-way transforming into a beast, laughs and call out to his son and tell the unseen child to stop tickling him. It's odd so I listen to their conversation a little longer. Turn out, the old trapped hunters are just talking to their wild imaginations. Years of isolation and an endless hunt must have driven them crazy. Is it possible for a man to stay sane in this nightmarish realm? Is it not possible that some contagious madness lurks in the shadow of the Cathedral of nightmare or in the dead of night? The maddening waves of laughter, the bestial snarls of beasts, the awful screams of folks, the deafening gunfires, the cracking of bones are the chorus of the accursed realm. I wonder how much time I have left before I'm stripped off my sanity. I feel sorry for the poor souls and walk away silently. Not long after, I find a batch of stinging nettles growing amidst the dead, foul-smelling streets and huddles of rotting roofs and mouldering walls. I walk over a mound of crumbling foundation, perhaps of an old house and cast my wary gaze over the deserted ruins before harvesting the greenies. They are going to be my lunch. When I'm back to my dwelling, I lay my stash on a worn table and see that I only have enough food for the next four days. I should store up extra food in case of being badly wounded. I decide to hunt far from my new dwelling. Drawing attention to my resting place could be the last thing I want. So I furtively travel out the town, in the cover of the sedge-grass and destroyed chariots on the decrepit streets. Sometimes, I spot and avoid a group of groggy hunters or a pack of beasts,that is either fighting or gorging on bodies that are beginning to putrefy. After an hour or two of walking silently in the shadow of the dead trees and decaying, weather-worn houses, some of whose roofs have wholly caved-in. I hear gunfire somewhere and near and spot a murder of crow circling on a spot. I follow their traits and smell a foul stench. And then, when both stench and sounds grow stronger, I climb on the rooftop of a crumble, ivy-covered house, trying not to make a sound. From above, I spot two blood-drunk hunters are engaging combat with a Blood-starved Beast in a bloody marsh. I recognise it for its skinned back and meat flaps. There are at least three dozen hunters and beasts lie motionless on a small reed-grown mound nearby. The hunters are swift and agile, but so is the beast. With a deadly swing, its poisonous claws tear open the throat of an old hunter. The man let out a painful scream and helplessly crawl in the ankle-deep dirty blood. The beast grabs his left leg and his right arm then proceed to tear him in half. The other hunter jumps on the vile creature, and drive his Beasthunter Saif into its back, trying to stop the brutal death of his companion. However, the beast drops its prey, quickly swat the hunter to the ground and grab him. He screams as it chomps on his head. When it let go of him, I see his headless body collapse to the blood-red muddy puddle. I watch as the sick creature resumes its tearing attempt on the first hunter. With its uncanny strength, it tears the hunter in half. It sinks its jagged teeth into the lower half and draws out the guts. After finishing the first prey, the blood-starved beast then gorges on the chest of the headless one, spitting ribs between bites. I decide to wait until the beast is gone to loot the bodies left behind. To my disappointment, a minute or two later, half a dozen Beast patients emerge from nearby bushes and join the bigger one in a bloody feast. Out of the blue, a cannonball explodes violently right on the chest of the Blood-starved beast and knock down others. Another hunter, in Yahar'gul black set , appears from the shadow of an old house. He has a cannon , still smoking on his gunpowder-covered left arm and a Rifle Spear in his right arm. The smaller beasts charges at him but the long reach of his spear keep them at the bay and he cut them down effortlessly, one by one. After the Yahar'gul hunter strike down the last beast, he starts looting the bodies. I decide that it's not wise to encounter such skilful opponent. I can barely keep up with two Beast Patient at the same time, let alone six. But as the Yahar'gul hunter approach the dead body muddle that lying on the small mound, one of the assumed deadmen quickly stand up behind him, grab his neck and drive a surgeon knife, possibly slathered in poison, into the open of his helmet. The Yahargul scream in terror but his voice slowly fades and he drops his weapon. The ambusher snatches the cannon and the backpack from his victim and quickly depart. I scan the area several times for any sight of danger before deciding to climb down and looting. Several crows also descend and start stripping flesh from bones and picking eyeballs from the skulls. I don't want to bother the carrion birds right now and just scavenge what is left on the cursed-stench marsh. I find some bullets, food rations for two days, some fatback of unknown source, likely ten pounds of cornmeal, six Blood Vial s, a Hunter Pistol, a monocular and some ragged attires. In the garb of the Yahar'gul hunter, I also find some Beast Blood Pellet , a bootleg medicine, banned by the Healing Church . I decide not to take the fatback and the beastly-stench medicine, due to their uncertain origin. I'll mend the rags to make a rug and the cornmeal can be made into ash cakes. I remove the iron helm from the deadman, say a little pray and don it. It would add some straightforward defence against slashing weapons and cover my identity. After looting the bodies, I search the marsh and find some dubious tubbers, which I don't recognise so I throw them away. I follow a trait and past an old wooden bridge and I can tell by the state of the road that traffic was very light hereabouts. The rock formation is weird and in various place, they occupy a large area, some even grow too high, forming impassable terrain. The rock, however, makes me think of a bad remembered dream. The grass on the roadsides grow overhead, promote the isolation of the place. Here and there, white bones and hollow skulls of all sorts of men and beasts littered the grass-grown trait. The trees loom over the trait and dried bodies are hung upside down from them. Soon, the trait veers off into a village with many deserted farmhouses in various state of decay. In a grass-grown garden, to my delight, I find some parsnips and decide to dig them all to grow in the garden in my dwelling. "In Roman times, parsnips were believed to be an aphrodisiac" , I read that from Sophia's diary and she noted that grew some in her garden, for more than just culinary use. After filling my backpack, I walk back to nightmarish Old Yharnam . Soon, the unpainted ruined houses grow thicker, line both sides of the road. In a small, dirty alley, I spot a pack of Labyrinth Rats, each as big as a piglet, are ravaging a corpse. I shoot five shots and take down two of them, the other scatter into the darkness. I sluggishly drag the dead rats all the way to the entrance of Central Yharnam whence I catch a glimpse of a gang of seven old hunters corner a half-turned Beast Patient in dirty lime dress. She clearly has wolf ears, tail and front pawls, but her face and torso is still human. I hide behind a crumbling, moldy wall and observe the gang with my new found monocular. Four of them each hold a limb of the half-turned girl and one freakishly pokes the poor girl from behind with his Piercing Rifle and they burst into a laugh whenever the frail woman weakly screams. One of them is adding wood to a fire and another is sharpening a knife. Atop of the fire is a big dirty metal pot with boiling water, and to my disgust, a skinned beast patient. I feel a wrench in my guts as I know what they are doing next. The woman is crying for help and tries to break free but is hopeless against the grips of the four muscular blood-drunk hunters. The one feeding wood to the fire stand up, and, in a mockery fashion, drop his pants. The others burst into another maniacal laugh and press the poor beast girl to the ground. The naked hunter then tears the worn skirt she wore and disgustingly shove his ugly trash against her behind. She screams louder but her voice is suddenly shut as a mad hunter has cut her throat open. Another one put a bucket under her bleeding throat and the mad ones burst into another maniacal laugh. I feel a tear rolling on my cheek and try to calm myself down. Trembling, I take a gulp of Sedative and silently retreat as I can not stand the violent and deranged act of the unhinged minds any longer and fighting these demented hunters is a suicidal move. Facing constant hunger and the lunacy of the endless hunt, their animalistic instincts must have blurred their reasons and driven them stark raving mad. But some folks with higher reasoning capability, like the Healing Church and the Byrgenwerth scholars that proceed them, committed even more hideous and cruelly inhuman crimes. So what really is a beast in Yharnam is up to debate. The rest of the trip is pleasant and not eventful, save for the noisesome vapors from the smoldering unfinished corpses the beasts left behind. On the way to my dwelling, I gather debris to form a makeshift wall around the garden to protect my crop from the pest. It's a tiring labour. After half a day of working while still staying alert to the surrounding, a small wooden fence is built around the newly grown parsnip. The fence is not nice and it's not really sturdy as well, but it shed a light of hope into me, in this horrible, maddening nightmare. I laugh as the wind blows and knocks down a wood plank from what I call a fence. I pick up the fallen piece and tie it back to the makeshift defence, telling myself to find some nails on other houses the next day. I step inside, barricade the door, lit the chimney, sautee the stinging nettle, add cornmeal, add hot water and serve myself a delicious hot dish before skinning the rats... But deep inside of me, the death of that girl is still haunting me... I was there, I saw, but I did nothing. Category:Blog posts